A historic Quran manuscript that originated in the region, and is possibly one of the oldest in the world, has come to the UAE thanks to digital technology, giving people an opportunity to explore the rare document.
The Birmingham Quran – part of the Mingana Collection at the University of Birmingham – gained renown in 2015 after radiocarbon dating revealed it originated in the period 568-645. It was previously thought to belong to the eighth or ninth century. Prophet Mohammed lived between 570-632.
The parchments, with deep red alphabets inked on them as well as interesting diacritical markings, have stood the test of time. Scripted more than 1,000 years ago, anyone familiar with the text can immediately recognise the words from Surah Al-Kahf, Surah Maryam and Surah Ta-Ha, chapters 18-20 of the Quran.
Visitors to the exhibition can engage with the manuscript, study the calligraphy, analyse the Hijazi script from Makkah and Madinah, and learn about the history of the document. As part of the UK/UAE 2017 Year of Creative Collaboration, a year of exchange between the two countries organised by the British Council, the exhibition has arrived in Sharjah and will travel to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The team looking after the manuscript at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Research Library are inviting people to discover its history. It is the first time the university has organised a digital exhibition on this scale outside the UK.
Susan Worrall, director of special collections at the Cadbury Research Library, said: “The exhibition is purpose-built for the UAE. The calligraphy is significant and beautiful and clear. The text flows and develops. You really get a sense of somebody sitting there and writing it down at that time.
“You can feel the link to the person who was creating it. I hope visitors to the exhibition can get an understanding of the origins of this particular manuscript, when it was created, the dating, the research and why it is in Birmingham.
“The Mingana Collection links to the UAE because of its significance to the Muslim religion. It’s deliberate that our first exhibition of this kind is in the UAE. I hope visitors to the exhibition will understand more about the text, the parchment, why it was written in such a way and how this manuscript fits into the development of world religion, and in particular, of Islam.”
In 2015, the University of Birmingham organised a three-week exhibition with the Quran as its centrepiece, drawing 9,000 visitors.
The manuscript has been in Birmingham since the 1930s. It was acquired by Edward Cadbury, who was building a collection of Middle Eastern documents in the English Midlands city in an effort to make it a centre for academic excellence. About 3,000 manuscripts were acquired by his agent, Alphonse Mingana from Iraq, who had settled in Birmingham. Mingana was a manuscript expert and became a curator for Cadbury. He amassed this collection in the 1920s and 1930s. It was only acquired by the University of Birmingham in 1999 after it was gifted by the Edward Cadbury Trust.
Preserving such a document has its challenges, and the manuscript is kept in a climate-controlled room so that humidity and temperature are monitored.
Scholars have suggested a connection between the Birmingham Quran and fragments preserved at the Bibilotheque Nationale de France in Paris.
“The manuscript in France has a clear provenance to the Emir’s Mosque in Cairo. It’s possible the manuscript was written for that mosque,” said Sarah Kilroy, head of conservation and programming at the University of Birmingham.
Dr Mustafa Shah, senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at SOAS University of London, explained the reason the manuscript has attracted such interest is because of the result of radiocarbon dating. There are manuscripts which are similar in characteristics and in terms of style and the use of diacritics. Such documents are preserved in Paris and St Petersburg. Dr Shah cautioned that most scholars would say carbon dating itself cannot and should not be the only criterion for putting a date on a script.
However, a combination of the result of the radiocarbon dating, knowledge of the script and of early Islamic history were used to fix the date of the Birmingham Quran. Visitors to the exhibition will notice its distinctive script: the type of characters, the style of the characters and the use of the dots as the manuscript has some diacritical markings in odd places.
“Today’s version of the Quran is fully vocalised and you have all the dots for the individual letters. In the early Islamic period these were not fully vocalised. These indicators would suggest that it belonged to the early Umayyad Period, around 665-670,” Dr Shah said.
In radiocarbon dating, the animal skin that the script is written upon is dated but the ink is not. In order to extrapolate the date from the ink, you have to use solvents which can pollute the actual script, so they cannot obtain an accurate reading, Dr Shah adds.
“When we look at the style of the manuscript, at the date, the use of diacritics, the style of the consonants, the verse markers, all of these fix it to the Umayyad period,” he said. The Umayyad dynasty ruled the Islamic caliphate from the death of the fourth caliph Ali in 661 until 750 [AD].
“The fact that it belongs to the Umayyad period should not diminish its historical importance. It corroborates the traditional accounts of the way in which the Quran was brought together.
“This certainly places the Quran in its historical context as coming from Hijaz. In the late 70s and 80s, a theory was developed by one academic and followed up by others, which suggested that the Quran wasn’t around at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and that the Quran wasn’t a fixed text for hundreds of years," he said.
“This manuscript, among others, shows that is not the case. It’s an important historical archive which confirms aspects of the traditional account.”
The exhibition will be at Umm Al Emarat Park, from November 20 to 29, before transferring to Dubai in the spring. Information about taking part in a one-hour calligraphy workshop is available from www.britishcouncil.ae. The University of Birmingham has also developed a four-week course, The Birmingham Quran: Its Journey from the Islamic Heartlands, which starts on November 20. More information about the free online course is at www.birmingham.ac.uk
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Tickets start at Dh100 for adults, while children can enter free on the opening day. For more information, visit www.mubadalawtc.com.
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A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Libya's Gold
UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves.
The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.
Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.
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The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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